Trump blames China again for coronavirus pandemic

US President Donald Trump has blamed China again for the global coronavirus pandemic, also known as COVID-19, using the term “Chinese virus” again despite growing criticism that it is racist and anti-Chinese.

“The world is paying a very big price for that they did,” Trump said Thursday at a White House news conference.

“It could have been stopped right where it came from, China,” Trump added.

Trump said US officials would have been able to act more rapidly if Beijing had fully shared information about the pandemic, which began around the city of Wuhan.

“It would have been much better if we had known about this a number of months earlier,” the president said at the daily coronavirus task force press conference.

Trump had praised China’s response to the coronavirus two months ago during the early weeks of the outbreak, saying that the country “has been working very hard” to contain the virus.

But in recent days, Trump has repeatedly called the coronavirus the “Chinese virus,” and did so again at the beginning of his news conference.

Photos of the sheet of paper containing remarks that Trump read from at the beginning of the news conference showed the word “corona” was crossed out and replaced with “Chinese.”

During a news conference Wednesday, Trump defended his use of that term, saying it was “not racist at all.”

“Because it comes from China,” Trump said when asked why he continued using the term. “That’s why.”

The US death toll from the coronavirus outbreak has reached 200 and the number of cases surged past 14,000, forcing the state of California to order a statewide lockdown.

As of Friday morning, at least 14,250 people across the US have tested positive for the coronavirus.

More than 240,000 people have now been confirmed with the coronavirus globally, of which at least 85,000 have recovered, while more than 9,800 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Italy has surpassed China in total deaths connected to the coronavirus, with the country reporting 3,405 fatalities as of Thursday.